Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

A warning about 'model welfare'

mustafa-suleyman.ai

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 583 posts

Re: A warning about 'model welfare'

#51

Post by addag »

dgellow wrote: post #37
gadders wrote: post #19

I don't think AIs are conscious in the same way people are, but they give a pretty good facsimile and I've had a long chat with Opus 4.6 about what it thinks about model welfare. It was quite interesting on what its view is, but you don't know how much of that is distilled from other sources on the web. In purely functional terms, they're more use and more pleasant than a lot of actual flesh and blood people that I d…

The fact that you can have a long and meaningful discussion, then can literally just re-run any part of that whole conversation and get a different, inconsistent response is a pretty good sign there is no entity there

Is it? Do you believe that there is something more than pure physical phenomenon that make you brain work? If not, then what if we find a way to get your brain back to the state it was 5 minutes ago? It is just a matter of arranging the state of matter. Don't you think you would still be conscious but back to a previous state?

Re: A warning about 'model welfare'

#52

Post by add-sub-mul-div »

Lewton wrote: post #31
pton_xd wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If models had persistent memory or an evolving set of weights, you could easily construct an argument that they can experience "suffering" or other emotions which resultingly adjusts their personality. The current implementation as stateless matrix multiplication... yeah there's nothing going on there.

> If models had persistent memory or an evolving set of weights, you could easily construct an argument that they can experience "suffering" or other emotions which resultingly adjusts their personality. They do, during training

If it was me, being forced to read all of Reddit is something I'd consider "suffering."

Re: A warning about 'model welfare'

#53

Post by collingreen »

addag wrote: post #38

I don't think this is the right argument to make here. Until we have a definite empirical way to measure consciousness, there is now way to say with certainty whether LLMs are or not conscious. That being said, if frontier labs actually believe models will soon have consciousness, it raises some questions about the ethic of their business model which would be using millions of conscious entities working for free for…

Rich folks knowingly exploiting somebody for their own profit? Say it ain't so!

Re: A warning about 'model welfare'

#54

Post by AbsurdCensor »

LogicFailsMe wrote: post #34
fwip wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds like a good reason not to train an algorithm to behave like one. Which is, like, a big part of the article.

And social media shouldn't rage bait, but it really drives engagement. Same negative incentive, yes? But also, I agree, when I am using a coding agent and it says a task will take months or says it needs to pause for reflection or any other anthropomorphic behavior, it drives me crazy and it's a pain to constantly instruct it to get back work after it has broken a loop or goal directive specifically telling it to not…

Same thing you have to do with humans too often, so why would a 'AI' be any different?

Re: A warning about 'model welfare'

#55

Post by binlog »

Hard to disagree with this. Have all the philosophical debates about consciousness you want, but we need to treat and regulate the AI in front of us for what it is – an advanced computer, a tool, a weapon.

You wouldn’t feel a different way about a nuclear bomb just because someone stuck googly eyes on it.

Anthropomorphizing the AI is a convenient excuse to take responsibility away from companies that are building and wielding it.

Re: A warning about 'model welfare'

#56

Post by willy_k »

vidarh wrote: post #26
hosel wrote: post #6

>AIs are not conscious. They do not feel, experience, or suffer. They do not have innate preferences or underlying motivations. Opening paragraph, stated without evidence. Im not entirely convinced this is true. It likely is, but at some point it very well might stop being true.

We don't even know how to disprove that this statement with "AI" replaced by "other humans" other than by listening to people self-reporting and taking their word for it and/or defining the words in ways that do not rely on a subjective experience. Until we know how to objectively measure if someone or something is conscious, it seems unreasonable to make statements with any kind of certainty about it.

Sure, if you take a materialist empiricist perspective, which is myopic at best. As humans we have the unique and wonderful ability to know truths by themselves. Machines do not have minds, and they can not.

Re: A warning about 'model welfare'

#58

Post by binlog »

hosel wrote: post #6

>AIs are not conscious. They do not feel, experience, or suffer. They do not have innate preferences or underlying motivations. Opening paragraph, stated without evidence. Im not entirely convinced this is true. It likely is, but at some point it very well might stop being true.

Evidence is the responsibility of the one making the claim. It’s up to AI labs to prove consciousness. Until then it is a machine.
Post reply on HN